


Laid to Rest

by VeloxVoid



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Angst and Feels, Emotional Baggage, F/F, Gen, Loving Marriage, Married Couple, Post-Canon, Soul-Searching, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeloxVoid/pseuds/VeloxVoid
Summary: After the events of Crimson Flower, Byleth’s nightmares grow worse. She knows there is one last job left to do, but the journey will be long and perilous.With Leonie as her loyal retainer and Emperor Edelgard as the love of her life, Byleth knows she must lay to rest the horrors of the Heroes’ Relics. Luckily, she knows just which two fabled Nabateans to visit.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, edeleth - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @possiblevoid on Twitter for beta-reading this for me! <3 Couldn't have done it without you~
> 
> This was a commission from my lovely friend @BowAndYarrows on Twitter! They commissioned me to write their own interpretation of Crimson Flower's epilogue, so here we go!
> 
> My commissions are open at the moment! I can do longer, multi-chapter fics like this one, or shorter one-shots! If you'd like to commission me, my specs can be found over at:
> 
> https://twitter.com/VeloxVoid/status/1257370465326284802?s=20
> 
> or alternatively:  
> https://ko-fi.com/veloxvoid

* * *

**7th of the Harpstring Moon**

Every time Byleth Eisner slept, she feared her eyes wouldn’t open again.

After her slumber, her five year lapse that had kept her from so much of the world, she’d become almost terrified of sleep. It was paralysing; the fear that one day she would close her eyes and never wake up, leaving behind everything she loved and had worked for.

Every night since the war had been plagued in such a way. Three years of tossing and turning in bed, waking in a sweat, terrified of being trapped within another five-year purgatory. Tied to another blank and empty dreamland. The idea flooded her dreams and haunted her reality until Byleth could bear it no more, instead leaving her bed to research something or another to distract her from the horrors.

"You _need_ to sleep," Leonie told her each night before retiring to her chambers. She’d look down at Byleth’s desk, strewn with papers, with her hands on her hips. "If you don’t sleep, you can’t perform your best."

Byleth would always try to refuse, to deny that she might be even slightly tired. It was only when she returned to her own bedroom, dizzy from fatigue, that she could truly speak her mind.

" _I'm scared to,"_ Byleth would admit to Edelgard as the two women would settle into bed together. 

Byleth knew she could speak freely with Edelgard – share all of her woes and worries. Leonie, however, was different. For her, Byleth needed to remain cool, the very image of balance – dependable and level-headed. For Leonie, she needed to uphold Jeralt’s image. For Edelgard, she was herself. Of course, she still loved them both dearly.

During the roughest nights, Edelgard would stroke her hair and whisper soothingly to her. The Emperor was burdened by such nightmares too, Byleth knew, and yet still she would stay awake, lulling her wife into the clutches of her drowse.

One night, after the nightmares had struck once again, Byleth had thrown back the covers in fright, stifling her cries to keep her love from waking. Sweat soaked through her nightwear, and she swung her legs out of the bed, unable to bear the confines of the bedsheets any longer.

Byleth wanted rid of these nightmares. She couldn't go on being gripped by the throes of death each dusk, fearing whether she’d ever see the light of day again.

Yet there was only one solution, she knew. She needed to lay to rest the last stray puzzle piece.

She needed the echoes of the city-folk’s words to be proven right or wrong.

* * *

At the markets last month, Byleth had overheard murmurs from the apothecary vendor.

“That’s what my supplier said,” the old chemist had told a man purchasing vulneraries. “Dragon people. Two of them. Up in the mountains.”

Intrigued, the young man had looked over his shoulders before leaning closer to her. “The Oghma Mountains?”

“If what he said is true. Said they were healing the mountain-folk. White magic powers unrivalled, so I’ve heard.”

A scoff. “You really think those dragon people still exist?”

The chemist had merely shrugged.

Those mountain healers could only be two people. Byleth’s heart had pounded for the first time in a while – still a strange, unfamiliar sensation. It unsettled her – beating in her chest as if trying to escape, making her blood run hot and prickly inside her veins until she’d broken out in a sweat.

So they were still alive, her old _‘dragon people’_ friends. And with that knowledge came the fact that Byleth’s work was incomplete; that she still had one last job to do.

The war may have been over, but Byleth’s journey was still ongoing.

* * *

Back in her bed chambers, remembering the events, she found herself shaking. Her blood roared inside her again, a remnant of her past, attached to such Nabateans, making her all the more intent on her decision.

She knew what she had to do.

Padding softly across the carpeted floor, Byleth crossed to the door, slowly slipping out of it and into the corridor beyond. She traversed the Imperial Palace by firelight, guided by the dying embers of the smouldering oil lamps hanging from the walls. They led her down staircases where the cold marble flooring chilled her bare feet, until eventually their light waned. In this part of the palace, no lamps were lit. Byleth stole one from the closest wall and blew on it a little, feeding the flame inside until it burned just slightly brighter.

From there, she easily found her way to her destination. An old, crooked door was tucked away in the furthest corner of the palace. A door that had not been polished like the others, instead left as a thick slab of splintering, worm-ridden wood. A door with rusted metal hinges and a huge, disused handle. A door that was locked tight. But Byleth knew how to pick her way in using just her hairpin.

The corridor inside was narrow, damp, and chilled her to the bone; with frigid air smelling of must and mould, and a breeze lapping at her lamp to flicker the flame, Byleth grit her teeth as she followed the stone spiral staircase downwards. Down she plunged into the crypts beneath the Imperial Palace – the place where the bones of Emperors long passed were laid to rest before Enbarr’s graveyard system replaced them.

It smelled of death. The darkness ate up what little light Byleth’s flame gave off, and she nearly tripped numerous times on on the uneven steps. That stench – of old, stagnant air and crumbling bones – filled her nostrils until she shivered, the cold wind creeping beneath her flimsy nightdress to bite at her skin.

Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea. In fact, Byleth _knew_ this wasn’t a good idea – the crypts lay too deep underground for anybody to hear her screams, and with those depths came a moist cold that rivalled winters in Faerghus. But she needed the nightmares to end. She needed closure. And so, she’d had to come here.

Her breath billowed out from her nostrils like smoke. Her feet landed in a shallow puddle as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her feet quickly recoiling from the icy cold. Slowly she edged forwards, watching the shadows of the room’s pillars sneak across each wall. Her lamp was dim, but threw out enough light to show what she wanted.

The chest. The chest that had been banished down to this crypt just after the war’s end, plunged into a tomb to lie with the Emperors of old. It sat alone at the end of the room, a pale stone sarcophagus with its lid closed tight.

Byleth approached it, placing her lamp on the floor beside her. She took hold of the lid and began to push. The stone scraped against itself, sent plumes of dust to the air, and moved slowly, painfully, until the lid fell. It clattered to the floor, sending a _boom_ echoing through the room, disturbing a world of dust.

She reached inside, and her fingers wrapped around the handles at either side of the chest that she knew sat within. It was huge, and heavy, but Byleth heaved it from its grave, snapping countless spiderwebs as she did, and threw it down onto the wet floor before her. The lamp’s light flickered more.

The red wood, marred now by dust and fragments of stone, was bound tight by chains and padlocks. She knelt down and picked them shakily, desperation now clawing in her chest to make her hands fumble.

These were what she needed. These could end her turmoil – put her at ease.

To get rid of these meant she could be free.

When at last she pried the lid open, coughing as the dust filled her lungs, Byleth became transfixed as she locked eyes with the chest’s wretched contents.

Rhea was dead. The crest stone inside of Byleth had shattered, unleashing her from its binds.

Yet the others still existed, glowing up at her with the muted dregs of warning light – as though trying to ward her away but too weak from their years of solitude. The Heroes’ Relics still looked as magnificent as they had all those years ago, their blades and surfaces the same milky bone-white, hard and porous and decaying.

Looking at them sent a wave of dread coursing through Byleth’s body. Old blood was still crusted around the blade of Areadbhar, splattered across the Aegis shield. Her stomach churned as she caught a glimpse of Aymr, and she forced her eyes away as she found the spurred, vertebrae-like edge of the Sword of the Creator.

_No more._

Byleth closed the chest, hearing the sound resonate through the crypt for seconds afterwards. Each Relic now resided inside this old wooden box. Trapped. Unable to cause any more death and destruction.

But they were not hers. They didn’t belong to her, nor Edelgard, nor anybody across Fódlan.

She needed to return them. With the archbishop dead, bones lying beneath the dirt somewhere in this vast country, and Sothis now no more than a figment of Byleth’s war-torn imagination, there was only one place to return them to.

She stood again, droplets of water running down her legs to send a shiver throughout her, and heaved a sigh.

She didn’t yet feel ready to face Seteth and Flayn again.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

**7th of the Harpstring Moon**

Hauling the chest back up the stairs took inhuman effort. By the end, when Byleth shouldered back through the disused door, a sheen of sweat coated her body, heat rolling off of her exposed skin despite the chill pressing in against her. She fell to the tiled floor at once, dropping her oil lamp and her grip on one of the chest’s handles.

She panted hard, but let out an almost crazed, exhausted laugh; at least the exertion had taken her mind off of the woes that plagued her. It was the little victories.

Dragging the chest across the marble tiles was easier than pulling it up the stairs, and Byleth reached the foyer in a matter of minutes. To her surprise, it was empty. Guards were not waiting, spears raised, to confront the disturbance of the Palace; she had not been overheard and mistaken for an intruder. The foyer was barren, pale slivers of moonlight cracking through the window panes to light the crystalline floor with a ghostly glow.

She crossed to the front doors, closed tight and guarded, from the outside, and sat the chest in front of it. She knelt, thankful for the cold against her skin, and slipped back into her thoughts.

The Oghma Mountains were a long way away; a perilous journey, the paths of which would still be crawling with the measly dregs of enemy rebels dissatisfied with Edelgard’s reign.

_But it’s the right thing to do._

Footsteps began to echo down one corridor. When Byleth raised her head, she saw a guard on their patrol, spear in hand. Laying eyes on Byleth caused a sharp _“Halt!”_ to ring throughout the foyer, no doubt alerting every other surrounding guard.

Byleth, however, was sitting slumped on her knees, eyes trained on the man running towards her. “But I’m not moving,” she simply said back.

The guard backpedalled at once. “L-Lady Byleth! Your Highness! My sincerest apologies, I didn’t realise _you_ were the one–!”

“I can tell.” She smirked as she heaved herself to her feet, staggering slightly as black spots clouded her vision.

Another headrush. They’d been happening more often as of late. Byleth’s world spun and she felt herself falling downwards, until she landed in the arms of the guard.

“Your Highness, what are you doing awake at such an hour? What is this chest?”

She freed herself from his grasp and watched as light slowly faded back to her: the moonbeams across the marble tiles, the oil lamps upon each wall. Her eyes fell to the chest, its red hue muddied by the darkness of the foyer, and sighed.

“Lady Byleth…” Over the guard’s soft words, more running footsteps could be heard from each corridor. “Have you not slept?”

“I haven’t,” she replied.

“It’s near three o’clock in the morning. Dawn will rise soon.”

Byleth pressed her lips together. _Ah, great._ She was in for a serious telling off from Leonie.

Just as the rest of the guards joined them in the room, a pattering of feet from the staircase made them all look up. Byleth watched her wife descend to the foyer, wrapping her crimson bedrobe around herself. Her hair trailed loose behind her, reaching down to the base of her spine in ghostly wisps.

“Byleth?” Edelgard merely asked.

“Your Majesty!” cried the guard at Byleth’s side. “I apologise if I woke you.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” asked Edelgard; her tone was cautious – guarded, as it used to be during the war. She was scared.

“El.” Byleth stepped towards her, watching the woman cross the foyer on bare feet.

They held onto one another’s hands, and Edelgard calmed at once. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” whispered Byleth, as she had so many times before. She searched her wife’s eyes, finding a relief within the pale lilac, buried beneath the drowse that threatened to pull her under. “Go back to bed.”

“Not without you,” Edelgard replied, stubborn as always.

It was then, however, that the other guards reached them, at once beginning to fuss over the chest on the floor. “Would you like us to move this for you, Lady Byleth?” one of them asked.

Edelgard’s gaze fell to it, and her eyelids widened at once. Long gone was her exhaustion. Now the haze in her eyes became replaced by a panic – a fury. She pulled herself away from Byleth. “Why is this here?” she asked, voice shaking. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Byleth reassured her.

A lighthearted scoff. “Like I’d believe that. I know you wouldn’t dig up the damned _Heroes’ Relics_ without good reason.”

Byleth pressed her lips together and glanced at the guards. They each straightened, clearing their throats and readjusting their grips on their spears, returning to their duties at once. When the two women were alone, listening to the footsteps of the guards in the corridors growing ever-quieter, Byleth took a shaking breath.

“I know what I need to do now.”

Edelgard narrowed her eyes, cocking her head gently. “It’s done, my love,” she whispered back. “The war is over. The enemy are long-gone. You saw to that yourself–”

“And yet all of their weapons lay in our basement, rotting. Doesn’t that feel wrong to you?”

The Emperor opened her mouth as if about to speak, but bit her tongue. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes calmed. “Wrong how?” she asked carefully.

Byleth looked down to the chest, at where the moon glinted off of its golden embellishments. It almost seemed to emit light – the eyes of the weapons within permeating the wood with their bloody glow. “They don’t belong to us.”

“Their owners are dead,” said Edelgard plainly. “Either dead, or they gave them up to us.”

“Their _real_ owners aren’t dead,” Byleth responded, watching alarm flash in her wife’s lilac eyes. “I need to return them.”

 _“Why?”_ Edelgard hissed. “Let them rot. They come from an evil place. Evil people.”

“Then I’ll return them. Destroy them. Make sure they’ll never be used for such evil again.” Byleth’s voice was gentle; Edelgard’s eyes were unforgiving. “Keeping them here is like clinging onto a bad memory. They need to be gone for good.”

By the tightness to Edelgard’s lips, Byleth knew she’d made a good argument. The Emperor walked around to the chest, looking down at it with a scowl. “Where would you take them? Who are their real owners?”

Byleth fixed Edelgard with a look – a deep, serious, meaningful look – and waited until El dragged her own eyes up to return it. “You know who they are.”

“We _killed_ the last of the Nabateans.”

 _We tried to._ Byleth’s words became caught in her throat; she knew this reality wouldn’t land well. She swallowed hard, and spoke in a rasp. “Seteth and Flayn have been spotted in the mountains.”

Edelgard was uncomprehending for a moment before her face fell. Fear lit up her eyes and tears rose within them until her brow contorted, lips curling into a snarl. Her jaw hardened, the muscles in her neck becoming visible, and she turned. Just like that, she was gone; she stalked away through the foyer, up the stairs, and out of sight.

After a terrified moment of looking after her, Byleth released a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. She stood alone, the marble floor freezing her feet, with the cold of the night creeping in around her and making her shiver. A part of her hurt; a dull pain spread throughout her chest and constricted her lungs – the part that knew she’d upset Edelgard. But another part of her was fiery. She had spoken her goal into the world now, and it would not go away. She would carry this task through to the end no matter what it took.

She bent down, grasped the handles on the chest again, and felt her spine protest as she heaved it back up the stairs after Edelgard.

Of course, she would apologise. What she wouldn’t do was change her mind. She needed to do this – to settle the last remaining chapter of the war. To seal off Rhea’s reign, and to finally, _finally_ allow Edelgard to rest.

Edelgard knew this too. Yet since the war had ended, the Emperor had grown even more protective – terrified of any sort of impending doom or danger. Terrified of losing Byleth again. Byleth understood that. She would be putting herself in a lot of danger for this task. Seteth and Flayn had never been the Empire’s allies at the best of times; seeing the Emperor’s new consort – and the woman who had attempted to kill them – could result in death. 

It was a chance Byleth had to take. She just hoped Edelgard would come around to the idea. The last thing she wanted was for their last moments together before the journey to be in bad spirits. Byleth staggered down the hallway with the chest in her grip, and shouldered back into her bedroom.

To her surprise, Edelgard had not buried herself beneath the bedsheets. She wasn’t weeping in the bathroom, nor sitting waiting to give Byleth an earful of insults.

The Emperor stood by their wardrobe, turning to face Byleth as she entered the room with a fantastic silver sword in her hands. The blade seemed to shimmer white beneath the candlelight, and lines of rubies embedded into the hilt shone like ichorous veins through the steel.

The stare Edelgard fixed Byleth with was determined. “If you’re going to go, take this.”

Byleth bent over and let go of the chest before stepping over it to Edelgard’s side. The woman held the weapon out in front of her on flat palms, and Byleth took it. It was even more beautiful up close.

It was nothing, however, compared to the woman it belonged to. Byleth looked up into Edelgard’s face to be met with a fierce expression – an impassioned one, but proud. Ready. The tiniest of smiles curled one corner of her lips.

“You’ll let me go…?” Byleth whispered.

Edelgard tossed a long lock of platinum hair over her shoulder, her smile reaching her eyes. “You have to.”

Byleth exhaled a laugh, tossed the sword to her side, and wrapped the love of her life in her arms. The kiss they shared was long, hard, and the two women soon fell back into their bedsheets.

* * *

It was the best night’s sleep Byleth had had in years.

Leonie was awake at the crack of dawn, straightening out her studded-leather armour in her looking-glass as Byleth slipped into her bedchambers. Through the high arched windows, the sun could be seen breaking over the horizon, flooding the base of the cobalt sky with a pool of saffron. Leonie had cut her hair shorter again after the war, and as the sunrise highlighted it, Byleth watched the short red tufts come alive, reminiscent of flames.

Leonie tensed as she watched Byleth creeping in. “Goddess…” She rushed over. “What are you doing awake at this time? Did you sleep at all?”

“I did,” Byleth admitted. “Not for long, but well.”

Leonie looked wary. “Are you okay?”

“We have a mission.”

A stony expression. “What’s going on?”

 _Everything at once._ “How to say this…” she responded, pulling anxiously on the short black waistcoat she’d donned. “The Heroes’ Relics.”

“What about them?”

“We’re going to return them.”

Leonie’s brow wavered with confusion. “Who to?”

“I think we’re going to meet Seteth and Flayn again.” Byleth smiled, watching Leonie’s face come alive with slow realisation. 

“But they’re… dead!” she exclaimed. “We watched them die!”

“They’ve been spotted in the Oghma Mountains.”

A positive double-take of confusion. “We’re going _there?_ Byleth, it’s _dangerous_ there–!”

“Aren’t you willing to take the risk?” She simply smiled, and laughed as Leonie rolled her eyes at her.

“Of _course_ I’m taking the risk. It’s just… what about Edelgard–?”

“I’m coming with you.” The Emperor swept into Leonie's room, her imperial robes billowing out behind her in a scarlet storm. Hubert was on her heels, a rosy tinge upon his cheeks.

Byleth turned at once, Edelgard’s words chilling her to the core. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” she nodded, looking to Hubert at her side. He closed his eyes in resignation.

“Edelgard, forgive me for saying,” Leonie interjected, “but don’t you need to be here for Emperor stuff?”

“I also need to be there for my wife, in the Oghma Mountains,” she said, matter-of-fact.

Byleth would have been touched were she not so concerned. “My love, you need to stay.”

A frown. “Let me come with you.” It wasn’t a request – it was a demand.

“We’d attract too much attention if you were with us–”

“And isn’t the meeting with the Adrestian council coming up in a few days?” Leonie cut in.

 _“Let me.”_ Edelgard hissed through grit teeth. _“Come with you.”_

She was terrifying when she was like this – face promising murder, rage heating the air around her. Byleth loved her so damn much.

“Lady Edelgard, Leonie is right–” Hubert tried, but flinched as the Emperor rounded on him.

“You would keep me from my greatest desire?” she snapped. “Why, and I thought siding with me was the only thing that mattered to you.”

Byleth couldn’t resist snorting. Leonie struggled to stifle a giggle. They were shot ferocious glances from the Adrestians.

Composing herself, Byleth stepped forward and placed her hands on both of Edelgard’s shoulders. “El, I would wish for nothing more than to have you by my side for this. But you understand as well as I that that cannot be."

Edelgard’s chest heaved, but her expression remained level.

“For this, we’ll require stealth. The more attention we attract, the more we put the mission – and ourselves – in danger. A party of two is less conspicuous than a party of three. Not to mention how much the Empire needs its leader, especially in times like these.”

When at last Edelgard spoke again, her voice was no more than a rasp. “I know.” Tears swam in her eyes. “I will worry for you, my love.”

“I’ll worry for you too.”

The two of them fell into an embrace, and as she tightened her arms around Edelgard’s chest, Byleth felt the other woman’s body shudder. Her own eyes grew hot for the first time in years, and before she knew it, she sobbed into her wife’s soft white hair. She didn’t ever want to leave her.

But she had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to @BowAndYarrows on Twitter for commissioning this! I'm super excited to continue :)
> 
> My commissions are open at the moment! If you'd like anything like this, feel free to let me know over on Ko-Fi!  
> https://ko-fi.com/veloxvoid


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